Legal Issues Surrounding Cannabis Control Commission Ability to Review Community Host Agreements

Colin A. Young, Land House News Service

BOSTON - Equally the Cannabis Control Commission weighs asking legislators to revisit the marijuana law to analyze requirements related to the agreements marijuana businesses are required to enter into with their host municipalities, the two lawmakers who wrote the law say no such fix is necessary.

The CCC has been wrestling with host customs agreements for weeks as entrepreneurs and marijuana advocates point to the contracts equally a reason for the slower-than-anticipated rollout of the retail marijuana market.

Considering the CCC volition not consider a license application until a host community understanding has been executed, businesses and advocates say municipalities are using the required agreements to excerpt more than than 3 pct of the marijuana business's gross sales, the cap in place nether the law.

At last calendar week'south coming together, the CCC voted downward a proposal to include a review of host community agreements as part of its licensing procedure. Chairman Steven Hoffman said the CCC'south general counsel ruled that the agency does not take explicit potency to intervene or reject an awarding based on the host customs agreement. He added, "It is very clear in my heed that this is ambiguous and undetermined whether we have the legal authority."

Hoffman said his biggest concern is that "at that place is ambiguity" and suggested the ambiguity suggests that there is "an issue of clarity in the legislation."

Rep. Mark Cusack, Business firm chairman of the Marijuana Policy Committee and ane of the constabulary's authors, said the Legislature's intent was to have the CCC ensure that host community agreements comport with the requirements of the constabulary, including the 3 percent cap.

"I retrieve this has less to do with ambiguity than it does reading comprehension," he said. "Simply put, it is part of the licensing requirements. So it would be our understanding that they would be making sure the host agreements are compliant with the constabulary they're in charge of overseeing and implementing, and non just cheque a box that they have an agreement."

Cusack said last week'south vote to not review host community agreements as part of the licensing process was "disappointing and frustrating" and added that commissioners "have taken a vote to non practise part of their job."

"There yet seems to exist a lack of urgency of getting these (retail stores) open," he said.

Sen. Patricia Jehlen, the Marijuana Policy Committee'southward Senate co-chairperson, said she is concerned that if the CCC does not enforce the law, particularly provisions like the 3 percent cap on community affect fees that are intended to make the market accessible to businesses of all sizes, the illicit marketplace for marijuana "will continue to thrive."

"The intent of the law was to reduce the illicit market, and to give opportunity to local entrepreneurs. If the CCC doesn't enforce the law, both goals will be undermined," the senator said in a argument. "Information technology'due south apropos that the CCC doesn't believe that information technology has whatever power to review the municipal agreements in whatever way. Apparently whatsoever enforcement of the law will be left to the courts."

She added, "Rep. Cusack and I take clarified the intent of the law, to limit the payments cities and towns can crave."

Officials from the CCC were not made available to the News Service on Tuesday and the commission declined to brand an on-the-record statement.

Cusack and Jehlen sent the CCC a letter of the alphabet in July "very clearly laying out the intent and what the constabulary says, and they are fully empowered by the statute to review these and enforce them," Cusack said.

In the letter, Cusack and Jehlen wrote that it was their "interpretation, and intent, that the CCC has the authority and is required to therefore review any such customs host agreements to ensure their compliance with statute."

"Given these statutory underpinnings, it is our promise that the CCC will ensure the conformance of these laws with respect to issuing any such licenses to preclude municipalities from using community host agreements equally a form of prohibition," the co-chairpersons wrote in July.

Cusack said he was frustrated past last week'due south CCC argue and vote because commissioners did not hash out the guidance he and Jehlen sent them in July and did not talk with him about it before suggesting that the commission might ask legislators to revise the law.

He said he has spoken with CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins multiple times and said he "stand up[s] set to piece of work with the commissioners if there is such ambiguity and they demand clarification."

Commissioner Shaleen Title, a longtime marijuana activist who was the alone vote in favor of reviewing host community agreements as role of the licensing process, said she viewed the vote every bit "possibly the most significant decision we're going to make in terms of how nosotros touch what happens with this industry."

During last week'south debate, other commissioners said they were concerned that reviewing host community agreements as part of the committee's licensing process would open the young bureau upward to legal challenges and even further delay the launch of an industry for which nearly 1.8 1000000 residents voted for almost two years ago.

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Source: https://www.telegram.com/story/news/politics/state/2018/08/28/mass-cannabis-rollout-review-of-host-community-agreements-urged/10906891007/